The Rise of the Hybrid Car

It’s something every driver complains about, a pain we all share; gas prices. Every time you fill up at the petrol station, you see the money draining away and with our non-renewable resources slowly being depleted, a new solution was devised.

Hybrid cars have been in and out of the media for years, yet these machines are slowly starting to revolutionise the car industry. There have been dozens of hybrid car models that have been introduced since 2005, and with the constant, looming threat of increased gas prices, we will start to see many more Hybrid models show up on the roads. In fact, you may have seen a few of these hybrids cars in Australia already, models such as Toyota’s Prius and Hybrid Camry, BMW’s ActiveHybrid 7 or even the Porsche Cayenne S.

Despite the business boom that Hybrids are becoming, they’ve still got a long way to go before they become the preferred vehicle on the road, with some experts saying that it will be over a decade before most Australian drivers will be using the Hybrid system as standard.

So, what is a Hybrid Car?

Put simply, the Hybrid Car that relies on two different types of energy technologies. To be specific, an automobile equipped with a ‘Hybrid’ system, utilises an electric motor and a bank of batteries, in addition to a standard gasoline engine, this allows the vehicle to share the demand for power between these sources using different methods.
Either source can be used as a backup energy source for the other, or alternatively, the vehicle might use each source in different sources. In certain cases where the energy required to power the engine is minimal, the gas engine is known to go idle and quiet until it is needed again.

The Pros
Environment Friendly
While most cars are notorious for the environmental pollution they can cause from their emissions, Hybrid Cars emit low emissions, which minimises the potential damage a vehicle can cause to the environment.

Efficient Use of Resources
With the way modern hybrids are designed the potential energy that is wasted when a car braking brakes is instead stored in the high-voltage battery bank, and then recycled to help power the car.

Efficient Performance
Both the electrical systems and internal combustion engines have their own shortcomings, however in conjunction with each other, both systems compensate for the one another.

The Cons
Hybrids are Costly
With the added cost of a second engine, which additionally requires the expensive high-voltage battery bank, the initial price of buying a Hybrid car will often be higher than most standard vehicles. This initial investment is the main turn-off for many drivers.

Low Resale Value
Despite the fact that the initial cost is usually higher, the resale value of hybrids tends to be surprisingly low. If you have plans to sell the hybrid after a few years, then it is less than likely to get the same price that a conventional car would.

What about Solar Cars?

While vehicles using pure Solar Energy as a source of power are a potential alternate, they simply aren’t a viable with the current technology available. Included among the number of issues is the very low storage capability and capacity of solar energy, the light-weight design in which solar cars are required to be built, and perhaps the most common question, “How am I supposed to drive on a cloudy day?”
Put simply, it will be a long time before Solar Cars become a viable alternative, let alone the new ‘standard’.